Spun Out

Someone said this show is a turkey and that is the perfect word for it. It just seems appropriate to call this show a turkey. Or maybe a lemon. Nothing to see here. Just a terribly written show where the stories and characters are nonsense and none of the jokes even come within a whiff of being funny, even in a "ha ha these dad jokes are so bad it's kind of funny" kind of way. The acting is also terrible by everyone including David Foley. We shouldn't give him a pass in this just because he was in Kids in the Hall. You can see them differently. He was great in other things but this show is garbage, he and everyone else are all garbage in it. Three stars because I have seen worse shows believe it or not.

This show was a real stinker. I give it three stars out of ten simply because you earn stars for Dave Foley from Kids in the Hall being in it. He is similar to his role in News Radio where he is running an office, but it's a different character and really feels like he is just reading his lines to get his pay check here and who can blame him? The stories and jokes were awful, I hope these writers and producers never work again based on how stupid this show was. I hated all the other actors except the one brunette actress. Every actor in this over acts or does a pathetic imitation of another actor or is flat and simply not funny. The two leads are terrible with no chemistry and not a funny bone between them. Goodbye and good riddance to this horrible attempt at a sitcom that failed like a car crash.

I give Spun Out a 5 out of 10 which I think is a very fair rating for this show. I would call it an average show so the over all average rating will have to do for it obviously! The thing that really makes this show hurt in the over all enjoyment I have for it is the acting which is really over the top and bizarre for most of the characters. The worst culprit is the actor who plays the office's stupid guy, who takes his pants off for no reason and he makes a jingle that is nothing but him talking about cats or whatever. I get it that he is supposed to be the bizarre guy who is supposed to make us laugh just because he is so stupid and bizarre. But here is something to consider, if the guy is working at a recording board and taping himself and he has headphones plugged in and turned on then why is the music also playing loud in the office around him? Don't these people understand how headphones work?

The bad acting and stupid mistakes like that really ruin this show for me. The only actors I like are the dark haired girlfriend (or ex girlfriend or girl who is just a friend I'm not sure what their deal is yet) and of course Dave Foly who is great in everything. All the other actors are trying way too hard or something especially the stupid guy I mentioned but also the dark haired guy (main character) and the blond girl. If they had people who could be funny maybe I could tell if the show is any good but for now I can't tell for sure.

I'm sure everyone reading this has already heard everything about the lurid story concerning the weird little bald guy with the fanny pack in this show (the character's name is Bryce I think, Dave Foley's assistant), the guy who played Fake Moby or Fake Dean in the awesome show Community... he (allegedly) put cameras in his apartment that he rented out on the cheap to young women and police (allegedly) found the equipment hooked up and the recording devices and believe he also (allegedly) did the same thing in his other place in L.A. Super, super creepy.

But on the bright side we haven't really lost anything because this show was no good anyway! The laugh track is super aggressive, it just looks and feels tacky and the plots are super stupid with the lamest jokes you've ever heard in your life, and every single line is a joke. It's literally like these are scripts of a 1980s sitcom they dug up and produced for some reason. So it's very dated but on top of all that they don't even do it right. It's even worse than that because almost every actor is of the quality I would expect in a high school play or maybe they just can't do comedy. I bet Dave Foley must have been drunk constantly with his coffee mug full of rum just to get through taping every day what he as a comedy legend must realize is a really awful show.

"Hey Dave." (huge laughs) "Hey Bryce." (huge laughs) "I wanted to ask you for a raise." (huge laughs) "I wanted to ask you if you forgot about my rule that you never come into my office without knocking." (huge laughs) "But I found something. (huge laughs) It's in my fanny pack. (huge laughs) (opens his fanny pack) (huge laughs). "No Bryce don't open the fanny pack!" (huge laughs)

If you think an exchange like that is super funny you will love Spun Out, but if you have a brain that is actually functioning at a level of 12% or higher, skip it and watch something else. Assuming you'll ever have the chance to watch this awful series again - which I doubt highly.

Let's first talk about what they did right. At least it looks like an American sitcom as far as technical aspect go. This is actually important, the American sitcom is a proved business model so if you want success start by not trying to reinvent the wheel. When you use cheap sets and bad lighting, sound, shooting (i.e. Satisfaction) it lends itself to being very hackneyed. Where Spun Out fails is in the writing and acting. From what I was able to discern from watching three episodes is that the character Nelson Abrams is playing a gay man. In many respects, this is the most homophobic portrayal of a gay man on TV. My reasoning is the only thing that makes this character gay is he say's "I'm" gay. Either the actor refuses to do anything "gay" on TV or the writers have never actually met a gay man. One episode had his supposed significant other completely obscured by a massive completely unreasonably large Karaoke trophy. In this same episode this gay character is worried about a female co-worker spending too much time with his significant other. Worried the same way a guy would be worried if his gal was spending a lot of time with another man. I don't know if these guys know how it works, but gay guys don't worry if their boyfriend is hanging around chicks. I'm not the first to say this, but who the hell are the people green lighting comedies this year? Do they not realize that there are so many amazing comedy writers that are waiting to hitch a ride south of the border? Stand-up comics are not always good at writing and neither are people who have resumes that feature the number of TV commercials they've been in.